It makes me happy out of something so dark & painful I can help people
I play this highly camp character who’s possibly the killer.”
Siobhan stars in the upcoming movie Lost Girls opposite Vanessa Redgrave. She said: “I play a grown up Wendy in Peter Pan. Super grown up Wendy is played by Vanessa Redgrave, it was like the dream job.”
She is currently in Country Of Hotels on the festival circuit. It tells the stories of the desperate souls who pass through the doors of 508, a room on the fifth floor of an anonymous, decaying hotel.
Performing is in her blood with her greatgreat-grandparents “Loch & Lomond” being Variety and Vaudevillian stars in the 1800s. She went on: “My great-grandparents were from Cork, my great-grandfather was the coastguard during the Troubles.
“His wife was handing guns out to the IRA out the backdoor, he was supposed to be the coastguard for the English.
“Ultimately, they had to move over to Kent and at which point my grandmother, Kathleen Dunne, who was 13, was snapped up by a dance troupe as they recognised she
was a super dancer. She danced around the world in the 1920s as part of the Bluebell girls with Mistinguett, Josephine Baker, Maurice Chevalier and Jacques Tati.
“She was captured by Mussolini in Italy because they thought she was a spy but it was actually her sister who was the spy. My nana was best friends with Padre Pio – this is definitely a film script I will be writing.
“One of Mussolini’s son’s took a shine to my grandmother on stage and sent one of his henchmen to come and ask her to go on a date. She was like, ‘Not a chance.’ The next day she was arrested – we talk about strong Irish women, she had a strong moral ethical code and not being bullied by people in power. My grandfather on the English side was a knock-about comic. He met my grandmother performing at the Nuremberg war trial, his sisters and my great aunts were famous contortionists. They were like the original Britain’s Got Talent.”
Siobhan’s dad, Donald Hewlett, was an actor best known for It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. Siobhan’s mother, Therese Mcmurray was a child star and lead in the hospital-based drama Emergency Ward 10.
She added: “My mum was six when she started working as an actress, she was in Dad’s Army too.
“She moved over to Lahinch to get away from acting and lived here for a couple of years doing radio plays with RTE.”
Lahinch called Siobhan back home. She said: “I spent all her summers there running about the fields being free. I feel more aligned with my Irish roots but I know I’m the girl with the English accent.
My granny was captured by Mussolini in Italy as they thought she was a spy SIOBHAN HEWLETT YESTERDAY